


Elementary Features of Commutative Rings, Introductory Notes

by handschuhmaus



Category: Mой нежно любимый детектив | My Dearly Beloved Detective (1986)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/F, Fluff, Gen, Jekyll and Hyde, Mathematicians, Mathematics, Mental Illness, Moriarty has little impulse control, Probably less math than you think but who knows, shh some aspects were inspired by They Might Be Giants, the Holmes pastiche that is not the band, what time period was this even?, why did I try to write plot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 20:56:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7377082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handschuhmaus/pseuds/handschuhmaus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not long after the fiasco with Inspector Lester, rings seem to be popping up everywhere around the detective agency in 221B, from hand ornamentation to smuggling rings to the notes of a missing mathematician...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Elementary Features of Commutative Rings, Introductory Notes

**Author's Note:**

> I watched this back about a month ago and wow. I wanted to write something but, uh, we'll see if this lives up to intentions as it, ahem, hopefully progresses.

Shirley Holmes went to Scotland Yard as she did every Thursday just recently (--she had her reasons), but this time she had a matter to bring to the attention of Inspector Lester. This was, of course, a delicate feat, as she had no wish whatsoever to imply that she was incapable of carrying out her work without the help of the man who had just tried to discredit them, but the job of extracting children from a smuggling ring was not, per se, that of a detective, and here she would prefer not to be needlessly at odds with the law.

As it turned out, Inspector Lester was waiting for her, which may not have been a good sign. He looked slightly embarrassed (and appeared to have a headcold--his stint hiding in the prison had not done wonders for his health) rather than gleeful, however, and it might be that he had pertinent information for her. So she stood before him and waited with an expression of longsuffering until he spoke.

Lester raised his eyes to the heavens as if begging them for patience. "Shirley--Holmes, I...have a case for you," he muttered out. "Normally I wouldn't consult you, but--it's involved, confounding, and not especially dangerous."

"Oh?" Holmes asked, putting her own matter on hold. 

"We, well, we think a mathematician's been kidnapped. But there seems to be some link with a series of bizarre small crimes. A lamb dragged out of a butcher's back room into the street and strangely adorned, with some cryptic message defacing the book. A cart carrying dry goods alphabetized while the driver was drugged, again with a cryptic message. A baby snatched and left with an old woman on the other side of the town, another of these cryptic messages pinned to its bonnet. And then there was the fake fire in a grocer at which we fond charred scraps of these cryptic messages."

"Cryptic messages? How so?"

"Well, at least we believe they're in code. We may need to consult a mathematician to actually decipher them. But you might have some idea, perhaps?"

"I--do not know yet, Inspector. I should have to see them to have any hope of determining that."

"Very well," he said, not without hesitating, "I know detective work requires access to clues. But, ah, Holmes, please see that you keep this discreet. My superiors have expressed doubts about the case--"

"Because it is so bizarre, or--?"

"Yes, and they fear it's some sort of hoax intended to create bad publicity for Scotland Yard somehow."

"Mmm," she muttered non-comittally, "but if I and Jane investigate it cannot affect your reputation at all, no?"

Lester blanched. "I thought Miss Watson was getting married."

There was no helping it-Shirley's expression turned slightly distasteful. "Yes, she is meant to be," she admitted.

"Ah. Umm," apparently Lester had the tact not to pursue the subject just now.

"I will look into it. If nothing else, I shall enlist the help of Mr. Green," she informed him. Perhaps now Lester could owe her a favor--

"Mr.--?"

"Mr. Green," she was obliged to explain, a little impatiently, "our, or now I suppose mine as the detective of the agency, butler at Baker Street."

"Oh." Lester paused for a moment, then, uncomfortably, asked "Was there something you wanted from me?"

She sighed. "I have...uncovered a circumstance which I believe the police should be more appropriate to sort out than they think a private agency is. To wit, there are children being used within the smuggling ring you are hoping to bust"--that was a lucky guess only, based on signs of police investigation she had spotted--"and I must insist on their extraction."

"Being used?" Lester paled again, apparently at internal battle against possible implications of her statement and ingrained ideas about appropriate roles for females.

Shirley sighed, "To run money and small items, or left as or otherwise used as distractions."

"I...see. If you can perhaps provide any additional information as you inspect our plans, we will do our best to get them--the children I mean--out."

"Good," she approved, and smoothed her skirt. They were almost at the station, and perhaps this visit would prove more fruitful than the past... three, was it? Or four? (And if it was four, how much closer they drew to the day of her losing Watson. Well, perhaps she would not entirely lose Jane, but she would not be Watson any longer either...)


End file.
